is downloading roms illegal

﻿Yes, Downloading Nintendo ROMs Is Illegal (Even if You Own the Game)
If you want to play classic games on a modern PC, downloading emulators and ROMs (files ripped from cartridges or discs) is a popular solution, offered by sites such as LoveROMs or LoveRETRO. Running your favorite SNES title on your laptop seems like harmless fun…until you find out that you’re probably breaking the law. Both the games and the game systems they come from are copyrighted intellectual property, as two ROM websites found out the hard way when Nintendo sued them this week.
While those sites were sharing Nintendo ROMs, the act of downloading them is also likely illegal, even if you already own those games on an old cartridge or disc. To find out more about how the law views game emulators, I spoke with three different intellectual property lawyers.
Unless you want Nintendo to come after you for $150,000 an incident, forget about hosting ROM downloads. All the lawyers agreed that emulation sites are committing copyright infringement if the games they offer are protected by owners as copyrighted material (which they usually are).
“If you’re hosting the site, you potentially could be liable for direct infringement of a copyright in the game, as well as the emulator may have software of some of the code from the console or platform that the game runs on. So the emulator itself may be copyright violation of the code in the platform or the code in the console, and then the games themselves would be copyright infringing items, assuming they’re games that are owned by a third party and the third party has not authorized their use,” Sean Kane, co-chair of the Interactive Entertainment Group at law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, explained.
There are different types of copyright infringement, but if the site is distributing an emulated title that they don’t have the rights to, then downloading it is a form of copyright infringement too.
But should individual gamers/downloaders be worried about getting a summons? Probably not.
“The reality of the situation is if you’re downloading it for personal use and you’re not commercializing it any way, a company may not ever find out that you’ve done that, or they might not care too much because it’s not necessarily hurting their bottom line that greatly if it’s just one individual,” Kane said.
Mitch Stoltz, senior staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation, agreed that solitary gamers probably won’t be served by a company like Nintendo.
“I think it’d be rare and approaching never that they go after individual downloaders,” he said.
Kane noted, however, that there are companies that take these things “very seriously,” and there have been cases where companies sued individuals for downloading something, even if it was for non-commercial use. But Kane could not immediately think of any examples of companies doing this over emulated video games.
And if you’re waiting for some of the oldest games to enter the public domain, you’ll be waiting for a while - “decades, and decades and decades,” according to S. Gregory Boyd, partner and co-chair of the Interactive Entertainment Group at Frankfurt Kurnit. Determining exactly how long a video game copyright can last is complicated, though. You can see how much situations vary here. Things like where and when the game was made and who owns it are all is downloading roms illegal factors. Plus, every 20-30 years copyright statutes are reevaluated.
“The nostalgic early video games are probably going to be under copyright until at least when their original players are in their 60s and 70s,” Boyd said.
But [Insert Failed Video Game Company Here] No Longer Exists!
One reason people may seek an emulated ROM game is because the company that made it no longer exists, making the title hard to find. In these cases, there’s a stronger claim for emulating to fall under fair use.
“There are no hard-and-fast categories, but you’re on somewhat safer ground there, especially if the game is no longer sold and there’s no easy way to get it in playable form,” Stoltz said.
But often, defunct companies’ assets are purchased, so even if the company no longer exists, some other firm may own the right to their game(s). Thus, downloading it from a ROM hosting site would be a form of copyright infringement.
“If it was a real video game company - and the games people cared about were from real video game companies - someone bought those assets…out of bankruptcy,” Boyd explained. “Someone owns it, but determining that chain of title is often difficult. It comes down to enforcement, at the end of the day. People might tolerate the emulation of certain games, … but if the actual owner decides to enforce against you, then you would be in the wrong. And owners are lately deciding to enforce because they’re able to have a revival of selling these games on mobile."
But as Kane pointed out, if there’s no company to stand up and claim ownership of the game, it’s likely that nothing will happen to a gamer who downloads an emulated version.
Emulating a Game Legally.
For the most part, emulators in and of themselves do not fall under any copyright infringement, depending on their purpose. And, as mentioned before, it’s unlikely a firm will is downloading roms illegal call copyright infringement on a game if no company own the rights to it, or if no one really cares about the game.
But what about the games people and companies do care about? It turns out, you’re welcome to emulate any game for backup, so long as it’s not used for commercial use. Check out what the U.S. Copyright Office has to say about it:
“Under section 117, you or someone you authorize may make a copy of an original is downloading roms illegal computer program if the new copy is being made for archival (i.e., backup) purposes only; you are the legal owner of the copy; and any copy made for archival purposes is either destroyed, or transferred with the original copy, once the original copy is sold, given away, or otherwise transferred.”
But selling that backup copy is another story, according to the U.S. Copyright Office:
“If you lawfully own a computer program, you may sell or transfer that lawful copy together with a lawfully made backup copy of the software, but you may not sell the backup copy alone. … In addition to being a violation of the exclusive right of distribution, such activity is also likely to be a violation of the terms of the license to the software. … You should be wary of sites that offer to sell you a backup copy. And if you do buy an illegal backup copy, you will be engaging in copyright infringement if you load that illegal copy onto your computer …”
Additional cases for emulating a game (that you paid for) under fair use include doing so for study, scholarship, preservation or review and commentary, Stoltz told me. However, he noted that “there are no real hard-and-fast categories” here.
If your goal is simply to find a way to play classic Sonic on a current device, consider checking mobile app stores. There are a number of classic-games-turned-apps. And as Boyd noted, current-generation phones and tablets have better technology than all but roughly the two most recent generations of video game consoles.
Another option for getting your classics fix is from non-profit Internet Archive’s Internet Arcade, where you can currently play is downloading roms illegal 1,785 coin-operated arcade games, many from the '70s, '80s and '90s, online. There’s also Good Old Games (GOG), a Steam competitor founded by The Witcher developer CD Projekt. The site offers old, and some newer, PC games tweaked to run on modern hardware, which you can buy and play on multiple PCs repeatedly. It purposely works with games lacking digital rights management, which restricts use of copyrighted works. And GOG has partnerships with Ubisoft, Cinemaware, Disney Interactive / LucasArts and Bethesda Softworks to sell games from their back catalogues.
Can I Rightfully Download an Emulated Game if I Own a Cartridge?
Let’s say you own a cartridge of the the first Donkey Kong and want to download an emulated version from a ROM site. It turns out that that’s copyright infringement as well. As noted above, while creating your own backup copy is generally okay, downloading someone else’s backup (or distributing your own backup) is not. As the U.S. Copyright Office puts it, “if you want a backup copy of a lawfully owned computer program, back it up yourself.”
Nintendo’s (Probably) Going to Win.
Now that you know a bit about the laws surrounding video game emulation, you’ve probably deduced that LoveROMS and LoveRETRO likely committed copyright infringement by distributing copyrighted games without Nintendo’s permission or giving Nintendo any money. But the sites may be able to fight Nintendo off.
“It doesn’t mean that the websites may not be able to put up defenses, including the fact that it seems like there’s reference in the complaint that the websites [have] been around since [around] 2010, and so the website could potentially have an argument that Nintendo has kind of sat on its rights too long,” Kane said.
While this is a bummer for these sites’ users and may spark accusations of Nintendo not caring about its hardcore fans, Boyd argues that fighting distribution of emulated games is “pro-creator.”
“For some of these games, the people that originally made them might still be making money off them, and when they’re resold again in [an] app store they’re often $.99 or $2. I think there’s another side of this where if you really want to reward the company or the people that made the game, you’d be better off getting them that way. It becomes a tougher position to hold, of course, when there’s no other way to access the game except through an emulator; I acknowledge that too,” he said.
But if companies insist on holding onto the rights of games people love but don’t distribute them to fans, the gaming community may suffer.
“The penalties for copyright infringement are far too high and they are unpredictable, and that causes a lot of people to avoid doing things that they really ought to be able to do, like helping bring back old games that are not available anymore because they is downloading roms illegal risk these massive penalties. That’s a problem,” Stoltz said. “Those games are sort of falling into the dustbin of history, and that doesn’t need to happen, especially when there’s a passionate fan community that wants to bring them back. But what makes that hard is this risk of really high and unpredictable copyright penalties.”
Downloading game ROMs: Is it ever legal?
Downloading retro games can be a point of tension in the gaming community. Many people say downloading ROMs under any circumstances should be illegal, while others say downloading games that are no longer for sale by the developer should be fine.
Neither opinion changes the fact that when we are talking about playing retro ROMs, we are stepping into murky waters. So today, we’ll do our best to clear up this situation.
Downloading retro emulators.
In order to play any game ROMs, you first need an emulator. An emulator is a piece of hardware and/or software that emulates the game’s original console. That means you can play Sega Genesis games without Sega’s original console.
You can be certain that emulators themselves are completely fine. There is nothing illegal about owning a digital or physical emulator. In fact, many companies like Hyperkin have made an entire business out of selling emulation hardware and third-party retro peripherals.
15 best emulators for Android to play old favorites!
The legal issues arise when we talk about how we get a hold of these games. Hyperkin stays within the bounds of the legal system by creating products that rely on the user having access to the original game. On the other hand, emulation software like Classic Boy or Dolphin Emulator rely on digital copies of the game to function. Though the software is completely legal, getting games onto them is a completely different story.
Downloading and ripping ROMs.
Here is where things get heated: Some people say downloading a ROM of a game that you physically own is perfectly legal. But, according to Nintendo’s website, that is not the case.
Downloading a game from the internet is the same no matter the scenario. The fact is that someone made a copy of that game, you downloaded it, and that is illegal. This is the same for all forms of media.
The only time this situation could be legally defensible is if the person downloading the game were to claim fair use. In an interview with How To Geek , Derek Bambauer, internet law and intellectual property professor at the University of Arizona’s College of Law, stated that in some cases downloading ROMs could possibly be protected under fair use.
Bambauer also states that since fair use is more of a standard and less of a hard and fast rule, this situation would be a long-shot, even if it is technically possible.
Ripping games for your own personal use is no different. Legally, it is acceptable to digitally copy your physical music collection, but media formats like video games and movies are judged a little differently.
On its website, Nintendo goes as far as to say that even hardware that allows physical games to be copied, and potentially distributed, is against the law. So, regardless of what you do with the game, you still made an unauthorized digital copy, and that remains illegal.
Combating viewpoints.
Despite this, many believe downloading and sharing ROMs should not only be legal but that it is the ethical thing to do. In the name of video game preservation, collectors and enthusiasts alike assert that downloading and maintaining ROM collections is a great way to protect history.
One known group is The Dumping Union. The Dumping Union describes itself as a group of ROM dumpers and arcade game collectors working to preserve old arcade game data. It collects old and/or inaccessible games and arcade boxes, digitally rips them, and preserves them for future generations.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have companies like Antstream. Antstream aims to legally bring retro gaming to the masses through its retro gaming streaming service. It announced its product

is downloading roms illegal TOP

earlier this year through a successful Kickstarter campaign. Antstream has spent years legally collecting licenses to more than 2,000 retro games, and its product launched in the U.K. last month.
Then we have the average everyday retro gamer who is downloading or ripping ROMs for their personal collection. Using shady torrent websites or ripping hardware like the Retrode, many people see no harm in downloading and playing their favorite retro games — especially if they are downloading titles that they either can’t buy on modern systems or that they already own the physical title.
Nintendo would disagree with this. Citing its website again, Nintendo states only copyright owners have the legal right to benefit from game distribution. It claims that distributing these assets undermines the value of its intellectual property. As a result, this decreases the amount of money it could make by re-releasing and/or recreating these titles on newer systems.
Playing ROMs legally.
That begs the question: If downloading and ripping ROMs, despite opinions in the community, is illegal, what is the best way play them? The simple answer is that if you want to play retro games, you need to find some way to play the physical game or wait for them to be legally re-released. You can do that with an original console, one of Hyperkin’s offerings, through some sort of legally licensed digital store like Nintendo’s eShop, through services like Antstream, or by purchasing something like the PlayStation Classic.
Now, will Nintendo, Sega, Sony, or anyone else ever find out what games you have stored locally on a flash drive somewhere? Probably not. But that isn’t the point. In the end, if you want to play your favorite classic games without breaking the law and infringing on copyright, then your options are limited.
Either that or you can just wait until 75 years after the date of the game’s initial publication for it to enter into the public domain. When that happens, you can have at it.
Is Downloading Retro Video Game ROMs Ever Legal?
@jhpot Updated October 6, 2018, 10:06am EDT.
There’s nothing quite like reliving your childhood with your favorite retro games, but are emulators and ROMs legal? The internet will give you a lot of answers, but we talked to a lawyer to get a more definitive answer.
Emulators are legal to download and use, however, sharing copyrighted ROMs online is illegal. There is no legal precedent for ripping and downloading ROMs for games you own, though an argument could be made for fair use.
To find out, we asked Derek E. Bambauer, who teaches Internet law and intellectual property at the University of Arizona’s College of Law. Unfortunately, we discovered that no definitive answer truly exists, since these arguments have yet to be tested in court. But we can at least bust some myths that are floating around out there. Here’s what you need to know about the legality of emulators and ROMs in the United States.
Emulators Are Almost Certainly Legal.
Let’s start with the easy stuff. Despite what you may have heard, there’s not a lot of question as to whether emulators themselves are legal. An emulator is just a piece of software meant to emulate a game system—but most don’t contain any proprietary code. (There are exceptions, of course, such as the BIOS files that are required by certain emulators to play games.)
But emulators aren’t useful without game files—or ROMs—and ROMs are almost always an unauthorized copy of of a video game that’s protected by copyright. In the United States, copyright protects works for 75 years, meaning no major console titles will be public domain for decades.
But even ROMs exist in a bit of a grey area, according to Bambauer.
The Possible Exception for ROMs: Fair Use.
To begin: downloading a copy of a game you don’t own is not legal. It’s no different from downloading a movie or TV show that you don’t own. “Let’s assume I have an old Super Nintendo, and I love Super Mario World, so I download a ROM and play it,” said Bambauer. “That’s a violation of copyright.”
That’s fairly clear cut, right? And it more or less aligns with the language regarding ROMs on Nintendo’s website, where the company argues that downloading any ROM, whether you own the game or not, is illegal.
But is there a legal defense? Possibly, if you already own a Super Mario World cartridge. Then, according to Bambauer, you might be covered by fair use.
“Fair use is a fuzzy standard, not a rule,” Bambauer explained. He says he could imagine a few possible defensible scenarios. “If I own a copy of Super Mario World, I can play it whenever I want,” he notes, “but what I’d really like to do is play it on my phone or my laptop.” In this case,

downloading a ROM could be legally defensible.
“You’re not giving the game to anybody else, you’re just playing a game you already own on your phone,” said Bambauer. “The argument would be there’s no market harm here; that it’s not substituting for a purchase.”
Now, this isn’t black and white; just a potential legal argument. And Bambauer is quick to admit it’s not a perfect one.
“This is by no means a slam dunk argument,” said Bambauer, “But it’s by no means a silly one.” After all, Nintendo could argue that by emulating the game on your phone, instead of buying their official port of a game, they’re losing money.
But, while there is no precedent specific to gaming, there is in other markets. “In the music industry, everyone accepts that space shifting is legal,” Bambauer notes. You can see where this gets complicated.
What If You Rip Your Own ROMs?
A common argument online is that extracting a ROM from a cartridge you own is perfectly legal, but downloading ROMs from the web is a crime. Devices like the $60 Retrode let anyone extract a Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis game over USB, and state their legality over downloads as a key selling point. After all, ripping a CD you own with iTunes or other software is broadly considered legal, at least in the United States.
So is ripping a ROM you own any different than downloading one? Probably not, says Bambauer: “In both cases what you’re doing is creating an additional copy.”
Now, Bambauer could imagine constructing an argument about how one is different than the other, and he admits the optics are different. But he doesn’t think the two situations are all that distinct, legally speaking.
“I think if the argument is, if I were a skilled engineer, I could extract this and have a copy,” said Bambauer. “If we assume, for a moment, that if I did that it would be fair use, then it shouldn’t be different.”
Sharing ROMs Is Unambiguously Illegal.
This fair use argument is potentially very wide reaching, but there are limits. “The trouble comes when it’s no longer just me having a copy, it’s giving other people a copy,” said Bambauer.
Consider the entertainment industry. The RIAA and MPAA have found more luck going after the sites and people sharing music, rather than the downloaders. For ROMs it largely works the same way, which is why sites that share games are so frequently shut down.
“Once you’re distributing a ROM, most of the people downloading it probably don’t have legal copies of the game,” said Bambauer. “Then it is market harm, because Nintendo should be able to sell to those people.”
Because of this, it might be a good idea, even if you own a game, to avoid downloading ROMs from peer-to-peer networks, where you’re sharing a copy of the game as you download it.
What If a Game Isn’t Currently On the Market?
Many people argue online that if a game isn’t currently available on the market, downloading a ROM is legal. After all: there can’t be market harm if a game is not currently for sale in digital form.
That argument might not be airtight, according to Bambauer.
“On the one hand, there’s no amount of money that will let me get a legal copy of this game,” said Bambauer. “On the other side of the argument, there’s what Disney does.” Disney’s strategy is to put classic movies “in the vault” for extended periods. Instead of leaving films constantly on the market, they periodically re-release them, which builds up demand and increases sales when that release actually comes.
Video game companies could argue they’re doing the same thing with currently unreleased games, and that ROMs are driving down the potential market value. “It’s a close case,” says Bambauer, “and hasn’t been tested a lot.” But they could make that argument.
At the same time, he notes, a game not currently being on the market could potentially be a useful part of a defense, particularly if you’re downloading a game you already own.
“I couldn’t buy a copy anyway, and I already own a copy,” said Bambauer, again hypothetically. “So it’s kind of like owning a CD, and ripping it on my own.”
All of This Is Mostly Hypothetical.
You’re probably starting to see a pattern here. ROMs are such a grey area because there are potential legal defenses on both sides—but no one’s truly tested these arguments before. Bambauer couldn’t point to any case law specifically about video game ROMs, and was mostly just extrapolating from other areas of Internet copyright law.
If one thing is clear, though, it’s this: if you don’t own a legal copy of a game, you don’t have any right to download it (yes, even if you delete it after 24 hours, or other such nonsense).